Game Design, Programming and running a one-man games business…

Gratuitous Tank Battles gets a minor update…

cliffski

To 1.012. Here is the full changelist:

version 1.012
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1) Support for new detail textures in closeup
2) Tanks now take corners smoothly
3) Graphics detail slider now adjusts lengths of tank tracks.
4) Fixed bug where weapons that had an already selected target could still fire at it when it was within minimum range.
5) Fixed Steam achievement bug
6) Possible fix for steam-integration slowdown on certain setups.
7) Support for detecting modded content in online challenges.

I’m still working on the game, obviously. I’ll be analyzing what balance changes need making, and hopefully tweaking a few other minor things that bug me. Textures that don’t tile well, particle effects that could be better, and so on.

The only outstanding bugs I’m aware of relate to steam integration, and hopefully I’m narrowing in on suqashing them for everyone.

I’ve been looking a bit at the steam in-game purchasing for stuff like expansion packs (if there will be any) but it looks a bit complex for a one-man band like me to implement.

I think I’m bumping up against the limits of what a one-man company can do, and may have to choose my battles more wisely in terms of where I compete. I have a new version of GSB ipad sat in front of me waiting for testing, plus some redshirt stuff to check up on, and of course there is always showmethegames.

How I found time for archery yesterday is a mystery :D

2 thoughts on Gratuitous Tank Battles gets a minor update…

  1. Hey Cliffski, two things I’m really curious about.

    How has Steam affected the rate of sales on GSB and GTB? I’ve read somewhere they make you NDA about your percentage cut, but I’ve seen other devs talk about raw sales numbers – just very curious since you’ve mentioned lots of players griping about it in the past.

    This second thing is kinda big: can you talk about how you go about testing something like GSB on iPad? I did some googling on your blog, and I couldn’t find mentions of testing except in the comments.

    How do you test a video game? Are unit tests helpful or does your object behavior break a lot when you make large unintended changes like tanks taking the rounded corners? I can imagine integration testing getting exponentially complicated as practically everything in a game is supposed to interact with everything else.

    I’ve seen modules for Firefox/Chrome where you can record a series of website clicks and even lets you highlight some text so it knows what to look for after doing so in order to perform some basic GUI testing – I would guess the closest thing to that would be replays or savegames in a video game?

    Does the iPad version have a debugger? I’ve noticed some crash logs for apps in my iPad System Settings – did you have to get a mac to run Xcode/iPad emulation and do you have to have an unlocked iPad to run a testing/dev app? Does Apple have to approve a build and distribute it on a “private” app-store before you can even test it?

  2. I don’t know much about the technical side of ipad testing and submission because redmarblegames handle that. I just help out with some hands-on testing.

    Regarding general testing, I’ve never used anything more technical than just constant playthroughs and checking. Even when I worked for big studios, their systems were no different. there are just some people who run through the game a lot trying tons of combinations of scenarios and choices to try and get things to break.

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